Far Removed
by burnmedown
Summary: With the rest of Bravo off on a boring escort mission, Mandy brings Sonny along for a routine meeting. An unexpected coup soon leaves both groups stranded in a war zone, fighting to make it home.
1. First Cringe of Morning

It's mostly pity that inspires Mandy to ask Sonny Quinn to come with her to meet up with an asset.

It's been five days since Bravo Three took a header down the stairs. The embarrassment seems to have mostly worn off, but the cracked rib has not. He's off active duty while he heals, and while Bravo Team's recent errands might not be exactly thrilling, they are at least _something._ She's pretty sure Quinn is going to end up chewing his own arms off, like an animal caught in a trap, if he has to stare at the dull gray walls much longer.

Mandy was never actually told exactly how Sonny's fall happened, but, being who she is, she picked up enough to draw her own conclusions. She knows alcohol was involved, and that Spenser was present. Based on the way the youngest member of Bravo has been moping around with guilt-ridden puppy eyes that rival Cerberus's, there might also have been an ill-advised playful drunken shove that had a very different outcome than intended.

Regardless of the exact circumstances under which the fall took place, the bottom line is that Sonny wasn't seriously injured and will be fine in the long run. Providing he doesn't first die of boredom.

It's a Saturday, and Mandy has scheduled an early-morning meeting with one of her assets, a bubbly young woman who works at a cafe frequented by members of not one, not two, but three separate cartels.

This particular town, Santa Clotilda, is one of the rare places where that sort of scenario would be possible. It is the closest thing to neutral ground that exists in this area of the world.

Due to its isolated nature and strategic location, Santa Clotilda is a requisite waypoint for three equally powerful cartels as they travel north by land. While each would love to take over the town and thereby gain full control of what passes through it, none of the three has been reckless enough to start an all-out war to achieve that end. As a result, Santa Clotilda has ended up as relatively neutral ground - the lone site of an uneasy, cold-war, mutually-assured-destruction sort of truce that has lasted for the better part of two decades now.

Those on cartel business may pass through, but nothing more. All else - be it drug-peddling, violence, recruitment, what have you - is to be undertaken elsewhere.

The town's unique situation makes it the perfect place for gathering a wealth of cartel information in a single centralized location - _quietly._ Neither the CIA nor the U.S. military is to be caught operating openly in the area. Fortunately, the region's relative safety, in a part of the world widely perceived as dangerous, has made it appealing to tourists who crave the illusion of peril without the reality. As a result, it isn't all that difficult for someone like Mandy to blend in.

With the rest of Bravo currently off discreetly escorting an American politician who has decided to broadcast his bravery and magnanimity by visiting Santa Clotilda for photo ops with sad-eyed children, Sonny is absolutely bouncing off the walls. Mandy is perhaps the only person currently in a position to do something about that.

After compiling an extensive mental list of pros and cons, Mandy sighs, throws it all out, and simply marches over to Quinn, who gives her a narrow-eyed, vaguely suspicious look that largely sums up their working relationship.

"I have a meeting with an asset. Would you like to come along as my unofficial bodyguard?" Mandy asks.

Sonny's eyes narrow further. He chews on his toothpick for a frustratingly long moment before drawling, "Why? You expectin' trouble? 'Cause I ain't cleared for duty."

Mandy slowly counts backward from 10. "No, I am not expecting trouble. I've met with Rosa dozens of times. Usually alone."

"Okay." He draws out the word. "Then how come you need a bodyguard?"

She sighs. "Sonny. Do you want to get off base for a few hours, or would you prefer to continue staring at the walls indefinitely?"

He gives that another minute of consideration, still chewing on the toothpick. Mandy can read the sequence of emotions: realization that she's trying to do something nice, immediately followed by suspicion at the thought of _her_ trying to do something nice for _him._

She's not sure whether that's more her fault or his. Possibly both.

Truth is, of all the members of Bravo, Sonny is probably the one Mandy has the hardest time actually thinking of as a friend.

She and Jason have had their issues, but they always work through them, and despite everything she says about needing to maintain professional distance, the truth is that Hayes is not just her friend but one of her best friends. They trust each other, understand each other, and most of the time genuinely enjoy each other's company.

Ray Perry has his share of flaws and struggles but is a deeply, genuinely good man, with a moral compass that bends but never breaks. Mandy may not be as close to him as she is to Jason, but she has considered him a friend for years now.

Trent, for all that he is hyper-competent and made of the kind of steel that lets a man be both a combat medic and a sniper, is kind, and more insightful than he often lets on. More than once, he has pulled Mandy out of her own head with just a few well-placed words when she was floundering in the aftermath of a mission gone wrong.

Brock is quiet and deeply reserved, allowing few people to know him well, but he exhibits fondness toward Mandy in subtle ways that she has gradually learned to recognize, and he always treats her with respect.

As for Spenser, Bravo's 'kid' (a designation that never fails to make her roll her eyes fondly, given that the man in question is nearly 30) is charming when not deliberately being a little shit, and could probably befriend a rock if he really set his mind to it. He's newer than the others and Mandy doesn't know him the way she knows Jason and Ray, but she does already think of him as a friend. A sometimes mouthy, overconfident one, but a friend nonetheless.

And then there's Sonny.

When she first met him, there was a time period in which she assumed - perhaps unfairly, based on his aggressive Texanness - that his problem with her was related to gender. She has come to realize it isn't, at least not mostly. It's more that he doesn't much care for her job, and also that their personalities just clash.

All that said, she does respect his competence and admire his loyalty. She likes to hope he feels similarly about her; if he can't like her, that he does at least trust that she tries her best to do right by his team.

After some more thought, Sonny nods, reluctantly, as though he is doing Mandy a favor and not the other way around.

"Good," she says crisply. "We leave in 20."

It's a beautiful morning. This early, the ever-present humidity lends the air a gentle, fragrant sweetness rather than the thick, sticky mugginess that will set in later as the temperature rises. The dawn sky is a vivid blue, streaked with furrows of pink and gold cloud. A bougainvillea-scented breeze ruffles Mandy's hair and plays with the touristy scarf she has knotted at her neck.

She and Sonny settle at the cafe table and sip coffee in a silence that feels almost companionable. For all that he's not really needed, Quinn is clearly taking his role seriously. He's alert, keeping track of passersby, vehicles, doors opening and closing, but he's also relaxed, his body language less jittery than it's been in days. Mandy, who had been questioning her own wisdom in bringing him along, starts to settle into a sort of contented confidence that she made the right decision.

"How long you reckon it'll take her to show up?" Sonny wonders, after a while.

Mandy smiles. "Well, she is rarely exactly what you'd call punctual." As soon as the words are out, she internally cringes a bit, realizing she's given the Texan a perfect opening to make some kind of rude comment regarding the tendency of some Latin American cultures to prioritize events and relationships over precise timing, but thankfully Quinn just nods and takes a sip of coffee.

After another 15 or 20 minutes, as the tables around them begin to empty, Mandy starts to get a faint sense of unease. It has never taken Rosa _this_ long to show up before.

A glance at Sonny sharply escalates that unease, because he's clearly on edge.

A stranger might not recognize the stillness and precision in his posture for what it is. Mandy has been around him long enough to know it means he's expecting trouble, and sooner rather than later.

Quietly, in an unconcerned-sounding drawl, Sonny asks, "Any good reason for there to be no traffic?"

Without moving her head, Mandy darts her eyes toward the street … which sits silent and vacant.

Cold rushes up her spine. Matching his soft, even tone, she responds, "No."

Sonny nods. He gives her a casual, fake smile. Quietly, he says, "We're goin' now."

In unison, they push their chairs back and stand up.

From behind them, the waiter says in perfect English, "I don't think so."

Sonny makes a single, aborted move toward the gun at the small of his back, and instantly they're surrounded. Three more people, two men and a woman, stand up from nearby tables, weapons already drawn.

Mandy's pulse pounds in her throat. When she automatically looks to Quinn, he widens his eyes at her slightly like he's trying to send a message, but she doesn't know what it is.

The 'waiter' saunters over. "Phones," he says, holding out his hand, "and guns."

Sonny looks like he's thinking about doing something stupid, so Mandy shakes her head at him, minutely. He sighs, hands over his phone, lets them take the Glock from the back of his waistband.

After giving up her phone, Mandy explains that she isn't armed, predictably gets disbelieved, and receives a pat-down of the sort that should only be administered by a licensed gynecologist. She distances herself, refusing to let her expression change - unlike Sonny, whose eyes blaze with fury. When he starts to take a step forward, she has to warn him off with another slight head shake.

A black car swings around the corner and heads toward them, traveling down the otherwise deserted street. Mandy watches it approach. Blood rushes in her ears.

If she gets inside that car, she will never go home again.

Behind her, in quick succession: a scuffle, a thud, a sharp grunt of pain, and then two rapid shots. By the time Quinn yells "_Down!"_, Mandy has already dropped to the ground.

Three more shots, the last two almost simultaneous, and then Sonny orders sharply, "Up! Move!"

Mandy scrambles to her feet. There are bodies on the pavement. Tires squeal. Sonny grabs her arm and drags her with him toward the alley. Bullets ping off asphalt, and she braces herself for the impact, but it doesn't come.

They run, down the alley, across another eerily empty street, into a different alley. When they've managed some distance, when there's silence and they let themselves pause to take a breath in the shelter of a dumpster, Sonny looks at her and gasps out, "What the hell, Ellis?"

Before she can answer, a distant explosion shakes the ground, followed by faint gunfire.

Mandy breathes. She forces herself to focus, to put the pieces together. Synthesize details. Draw conclusions.

Whatever is going on, it is much bigger than just the two of them. Santa Clotilda may have just become a war zone … one they're stranded in with no transportation, no way to communicate, and no weapons other than the Glock Sonny stole back from their would-be captors.

Conclusion: Basically, they're screwed.

* * *

I'm baaaaack!

Next up: A Jason POV chapter in which the rest of Bravo quickly realizes things in Santa Clotilda have gone to hell.


	2. The Fire It Ignites

If there's one thing Jason Hayes has learned about the elite operators under his command, it's that boredom never brings out the best in them.

Being stuck in sleepy Santa Clotilda, running mindless errands and escorting a self-important politician on photo ops, was bound to leave everyone antsy and annoyed. Beforehand, Jason did his best to get them out of it, arguing that this sort of babysitting duty didn't require a team of Bravo's status, but his attempts were unsuccessful due to politics far above his pay grade. He was left with no alternative but to tell his team to put up with it. They're only here for a couple weeks, after all. It's not like they're spending an entire deployment in the place.

He reminded them to keep their heads in the game, to maintain perspective. They all assured him they would … and then it took less than three days for something almost fatally stupid to occur.

Sonny and Clay drinking together while off duty? That's par for the course these days, and Jason has no problem with it so long as they're both sober and ready at go time. And, you know, so long as the drinking doesn't end with them getting so plastered that one of them ends up accidentally shoving the other down the goddamn stairs.

Once they had sobered up enough to actually remember anything that was said to them, Jason lit them both up for being idiots, Clay a little extra since he was the one who did the pushing rather than the one who damn near got his neck broken. Obviously already drowning in guilt, the kid accepted the lecture without a single word, just downcast eyes and a series of morose nods.

Now, five days later, Jason can't even remember the exact words he used, just that he intended them to make one hell of an impression. He wanted Clay to understand that that sort of thing could absolutely never happen again. He needed him to realize how close he'd come to a kind of disaster they, as a team, might never have recovered from.

Spenser isn't a rookie anymore. He _has_ to know better.

Jason's goal was to clearly communicate that point and make sure it would never be forgotten so that everyone could then move on. He's pretty sure he accomplished the first part. The moving on is proving more difficult, because Spenser has no apparent intention of doing any such thing.

It's not that he isn't doing his job. He is, without a single complaint or question - and without much of anything else, either. He rarely talks unless spoken to. His gaze never quite seems to meet anybody's eyes. He's professional and aloof and completely not himself, and Jason is already dreading the follow-up 'Stop wallowing, you idiot' lecture he is probably going to have to give at some point.

Sonny, he knows, has already tried, but Clay will barely talk to him either. Jason figures he'll give the kid a little more time to find his way out of his own head, and if that doesn't work, lecture time it is.

Or maybe he'll just sic Ray on him. That's usually effective.

Today, a Saturday, has started out much like the last few. The politician, a weasel named Bryson, gets a nice early start so he can go grandstand, stare sadly at shacks, and pose with grubby children (most of whom Jason is pretty sure are only dirty because they've been playing in the mud).

Despite the beautiful weather, the whole process is mind-numbingly boring. Right up until it's not.

Brock is the first one to realize there's something off. Jason notices that he keeps staring at the street, tracking cars with an intensity that looks more like worry than boredom.

Shifting over close to Bravo Five, Jason asks, too softly for anyone else to hear, "Problem?"

Brock takes a thoughtful second before replying, and he doesn't look away from the street when he does. "Not as much traffic as there should be, and what there is keeps repeating."

Jason's skin prickles. The world snaps into sharp focus. "Repeating? You sure?"

Brock gives him a sideways glance. "Yeah, boss. Just in the last 15 mikes, I've seen the same car twice. Same truck three times. It's like-"

"Like somebody is trying to simulate normal traffic patterns."

Brock nods.

Jason takes a steady breath. Just like that, boredom and moping are suddenly the least of his worries.

"Pack it up," he says into the radio, quietly and calmly. "We're going. Now."

Trent and Clay, who had taken up positions to the front left and right of the protectee, casually head back toward Jason and Brock. Spenser smoothly snags Bryson by the elbow and pulls him along, ignoring the man's attempts at protesting.

They make it back to the truck unopposed, but not much farther than that.

Once everybody is loaded up and the doors are shut, Trent starts to pull out into the currently empty street that leads out to the main road. He barely gets the truck in gear before a car, probably one of the ones Brock saw before, pulls sharply across in front of them, blocking their way.

Trent instantly throws it into reverse. By the time they get their heads turned to look back, there's already another vehicle blocking the other end of the street.

Which is when Brock spots the RPG.

Trent has the presence of mind to gun it and pull them even with a bus parked at the side of the road so that they won't get immediately mowed down when they abandon the truck.

They throw the doors open and spill out, diving behind the bus, Spenser still dragging Bryson with him. Bullets chip the concrete at their feet. They make it into cover just before the RPG reduces their vehicle to burning scrap metal, the proximity of the blast setting Jason's ears ringing.

Ray risks breaking cover to take out the tango with the RPG, dives back successful and unharmed. It will buy them time, but not much; in a few minutes, another will take the man's place. They need to find a better position before that happens.

Jason does a quick scan of their surroundings, finds a solid-looking brick building with wide concrete planters out front, and orders his men to move.

They take turns laying down cover fire, with all of them - even the stumbling, terrified politician - making it safely across the expanse of open pavement and to the relative safety of the planters. Seconds later, Trent takes out a second tango who'd picked up the RPG, reminding Jason again of the benefits of running a team that's half made up of snipers.

Unfortunately, being required to keep a low profile in Santa Clotilda meant they weren't allowed to go out in public equipped with their usual gear and weapons. Probably the only reason they're still holding their own is because of what they managed to snag from the truck before it got blown up.

"Get him inside!" Jason yells to Clay, jerking his head toward the building.

"Copy that. Moving!" Spenser grabs Bryson, waits for the hail of cover fire from his teammates, and then drags the man across the last remaining sliver of open ground, through the glass-windowed foyer, and into the cover of the brick building.

Once Clay and the protectee are out of sight, Jason has to decide how quickly to collapse the rest of his team to Spenser's position. They've already significantly cut down the opposition, and the tangos don't seem to have backup coming, at least not yet. If Bravo could get the RPGs out of play, clear the street for long enough to get out and take Bryson back to base-

Jason pops up, fires, ducks back down behind the planter, and gets hit in the back by a shock wave and a rain of broken glass.

It takes him a stunned instant to figure out what the hell just happened.

Ears ringing, unable to make out what Ray is yelling at him, Jason looks back to see that all the foyer windows have exploded outward, and the brick wall behind them is half-collapsed.

Spenser.

Bryson.

_Shit._

Where the hell did the explosion come from? Was the place rigged? Did the tangos circle around, come in through the back of the building?

Doesn't matter. They have to get inside.

After releasing a barrage of bullets that takes out half the remaining tangos and leaves the others scrambling for cover, the remaining members of Bravo move purposefully around the west side of the building, away from the street, and break in through a side door.

The first room they enter is empty and largely intact. The second has a far wall that's cracked and crumbled.

Beyond it, there comes a series of shots, loud in the enclosed space.

By the time the rest of the team makes it through the doorway, Spenser has already taken out both of the tangos who must have come in through the building's rear entrance. He's wavering on his knees, gun still up, using his body to shield Bryson, who's down on the floor.

The kid looks up as his team enters the room. He seems dazed, but otherwise not bad off considering the state of the room: broken windows, rubble, walls half-collapsed.

"Got contacted," he says, voice ragged. "They threw a grenade."

"So I see." While Trent goes to check on the protectee, Jason looks at Clay's eyes. If he's got a concussion, it's a mild one. Kid is lucky as hell.

Then Jason glances up, catches Trent's gaze, and his heart drops into his gut.

Bryson is dead. There's a bullet hole in his temple.

Spenser catches the change in expression, follows Jason's gaze, and crumbles. "Shit. No. I was - I tried-"

"Clay." Jason grabs him by the shoulders, tries to get him to focus.

The kid looks up, his eyes full of searing guilt. "Jace, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Goddammit. This is the _last_ thing they needed right now.

And they're still in danger, so dealing with it will have to wait.

Jason allows himself just enough time to say, "Not your fault. Now shake it off."

Spenser draws a shaky breath, nods. "Copy." He accepts Jason's offered hand, makes it to his feet, leans over to cough up some of the dust he's inhaled.

There's yelling outside. They've run out of time.

Whatever's going on here, Jason has a feeling it encompasses a lot more than just the murder of a single American politician … and getting his guys back to base alive is going to be one hell of a task.

Jason attempts to call in a sitrep to Blackburn, but is unable to make contact. Uneasiness settles in his gut, but he tells himself it's likely just that comms are down. He'll try again to reestablish contact later, once their situation is less tenuous.

They get up, steady themselves, ready their weapons. Jason slings Bryson's body over his shoulder, Trent takes Clay's arm to steady him, and they go out to face whatever comes.


	3. Crawl Home

The streets are much, much too quiet.

Mandy already knows she and Quinn are in trouble, but she feels like she's only just starting to wrap her mind around the true scope of it, as though the danger is an iceberg and most of it still lies below the surface of the sea.

In the brief moments she and Sonny take to rest and regroup, Mandy's mind keeps adding up details: the amount of planning and preparation that went into this; the difficulty of pulling it off without raising any alarms beforehand; the complexity of managing to so thoroughly control a town like Santa Clotilda, right down to the movement of traffic and pedestrians.

The only explanation that makes sense to her is a coup. This has to be one of the cartels going for it, attempting to claim the formerly neutral territory as theirs alone.

Why, after two decades of uneasy but prosperous peace, would one of the cartels suddenly be willing to risk everything to control this one town? She has no idea. All she knows is that she never saw it coming, and that that failure is going to haunt her - if she lives long enough.

Why was Mandy targeted for capture? Probably partly because her impressive collection of assets and contacts makes her a convenient single source of information about all three cartels, and whichever one just started a war will want as much intel as possible about the enemies they're about to take on. Also, just in general, capturing a CIA operative is a damn good way to make a statement.

Who else will be targeted? She can't be sure, but she guesses that the cartel making its move will want to wipe out every trace of every power that isn't them - meaning, potentially, any military and law enforcement that hasn't already been bought or beaten into cooperation.

Like Bravo. Maybe even the local military base as well.

Mandy doesn't allow herself to worry about that, not for long. Bravo is a team of well-armed Navy SEALs with a direct line to backup, and the base should be able to hold out for a while, at least. Her? All she has is herself, plus one operator with a cracked rib, a Glock, and no spare ammunition - and they've got no way to call for assistance.

Sonny doesn't think they'll make it back to base, not without help. His initial idea, that they should steal a vehicle and drive there, went out the window as soon as they realized just how thoroughly under cartel control the streets are at the moment.

In Quinn's opinion, they need to do two things if they're going to survive: they need to get out of the city and into the concealment of the surrounding jungle, and they need to find some way to contact Blackburn. Stealing a phone would be ideal, but is much easier said than done - there are no pedestrians, no street vendors. The cafes are empty. The businesses have shuttered.

Whatever is going down, the people of Santa Clotilda saw it coming and are doing their level best to just stay out of its way.

The few vehicles that are out and about, based on their movement patterns and occupants, belong to cartel enforcers. Looking for Mandy, or just patrolling? It's hard to know for sure, but either way, getting caught wouldn't have a pleasant ending.

Mandy is comically out of her depth. Her field experience largely consists of sitting at cafes talking to assets (which was all that was supposed to happen today). Her weapons of choice are wits and words. Sure, she has some basic combat training, but it's rusty as hell and not reinforced by experience.

She defers to Sonny, mostly just keeping her mouth shut and following his terse commands, letting him tell her when to move, stop, duck, run. For all their tension, all their personality clashes over the years, she knows to the bedrock of her soul that she can trust him. If there is a way to keep her alive, Sonny Quinn will find it or die trying.

They work their way outward, gradually moving away from the town center and toward the place where the crowded neighborhoods start to melt into lush foliage. It's maybe half an hour after the initial attack when their luck runs out.

They've entered a narrow network of connected alleys shaded by dense vines and the branches of overhanging trees. Mandy feels jumpy and unsettled; her instincts can't seem to decide whether the insular environment is sheltered and safe, or a potential kill box.

Sticking close to the wall, silent but for the soft shuffle of their feet, they make it to the junction of another narrow alley - and get blindsided.

By the time Mandy has a chance to register that they're in trouble, Sonny has already shoved her out of the way and gotten slammed into the wall by a wild-eyed, knife-wielding assailant.

The struggle lasts only a few seconds before Sonny overpowers the smaller man, bashes his head against stone twice, drops him, and kicks the knife away. It's efficient and vicious, and it isn't until Quinn presses his hand against his side and leans against the wall for support that Mandy remembers he was already injured.

As she steps forward, he raises his head, pushes off the wall and straightens, the moment of weakness gone like it never existed. "Gotta move," he says shortly. "Asshole might've had friends."

They end up stopping to rest in a tiny, abandoned courtyard, its walls almost hidden by draperies of flowering vines. Sonny eases himself down on a bench, keeps his voice quiet when he says, "That wasn't no trained fighter. Reckon there's a bounty on us, and these townfolks, they know about it."

Mandy shivers. The afternoon is growing hotter, even in the shade of the courtyard, but she feels cold to her bones. Santa Clotilda might be doing its best impression of a ghost town, but she knows it's anything but. The area hasn't been peaceful long enough for its denizens to forget how to disappear - or for them to forget the value of gaining favor with the ruling power. The idea that any one of the hiding townspeople could be a threat? Well, it's not exactly reassuring.

Sonny shifts, winces, looks down at the hand he still has pressed against his side. "Don't reckon I could borrow your scarf," he says.

When Mandy stares in confusion for a few seconds, Quinn gives a put-upon sigh and shows her his bloody palm.

She assumed it was just the rib hurting him. She was mistaken.

Mandy's face must show more than she meant to reveal, because Sonny says, in a tone that could almost be considered reassuring, "Don't think it's too deep. Just need to stop the bleeding." He tugs up his black T-shirt to reveal a seeping gash through the meat of his side. He's right: it doesn't look like it hit anything internal, but the blood loss could become a problem.

She takes the scarf from around her neck, but hesitates before giving it to him. It's a lightweight, gauzy thing, meant to cast her as a tourist with more money than sense. By itself, it won't make much of a bandage.

With an internal shrug, Mandy reaches into her pocket, pulls out the ultra-thin, high-absorbency maxi pad she'd brought along today just in case, and hands it over along with the scarf.

Sonny accepts it without a hint of hesitation. He presses the absorbent side against the wound, adheres the sticky side to the scarf, then ties the fabric tight around his waist to hold the makeshift bandage in place. "Good thinkin', Ellis," he tells her.

Looking up, he apparently catches the hint of surprise and gives her a wry grin in response to it. "I was raised by my mama and my two big sisters. I ain't afraid of girl cooties."

"Noted," Mandy says, and wonders how many other things she doesn't know about this man, despite how long they've worked together.

Sonny pulls his shirt back down over the bandage, and they get moving again.

Mandy locks down the fear, feeding herself a constant mantra of _Maintain situational awareness,_ and finally it pays off. They're creeping past an empty parked car on a quiet street, and she glances through the window to see a plain flip phone wedged between the front passenger seat and the console.

"Sonny," she breathes. When he looks back, Mandy tips her head toward the car window and whispers, "Phone."

Understanding comes quickly. He gives her a curt nod and takes up a defensive position, guarding as she checks the door. It's locked, but that's a solvable issue; the car is an old model with the lock knob at the top of the door, just below the window. It takes a shoelace, a loop, and about 60 seconds for Mandy to get the door open.

_Thanks, Mom,_ she thinks sardonically as she reaches for the phone that will hopefully save her and Sonny's lives.

She pulls it out and turns back around just in time to see a man dart out from behind another parked car and slam into Quinn.

There's no quick resolution this time. Either this man is a better fighter than the last, or Sonny is just weakened enough that it's harder for him to get the upper hand.

The two of them crash into the pavement, Sonny landing hard on his injured side. His muffled yell of pain, and then the thud of punches finding their mark, has Mandy scrambling frantically to find a weapon.

She settles on the only thing available, a chunk of concrete from the cracked sidewalk. When she tries to get close enough to land a hit, the man swipes out with his leg and takes her feet out from under her.

Mandy goes down hard, her head bouncing off the pavement. Black glitter sparkles in front of her eyes, and she loses her grip on both the phone and the makeshift weapon. Locking away the shock and pain, she rolls to the side. Her scrabbling fingers find the piece of concrete.

Sonny has pushed himself up and is dragging the assailant back, trying to get an arm locked around the man's throat. The tango turns, cocks back his arm to throw a punch.

Mandy hits him in the back of the head with the concrete. He slumps forward. She hits him again, then again. It takes Sonny grabbing her wrist to stop her.

"He's down, Mandy," Quinn says, in a surprisingly gentle tone. He pushes the man away and staggers to his feet. "You got the phone?"

She finds it, lying innocuously on the sidewalk where it was dropped. Once Mandy retrieves the phone, Sonny picks a direction and they move as quickly as possible off the street and into better cover - both a little wobbly, but alive and on their feet. Mandy's nerves are as taut as piano wire, but no surprises jump from the shadows.

Once they've found a concealed, quiet place, Mandy pulls out the flip phone, opens it, and stares blankly at the broken screen. Where there should be words and icons, there's instead an indecipherable kaleidoscope of black lines and green blotches.

Mandy looks up. Her head aches. "We've got a problem," she says quietly, and shows Quinn the screen.

He looks at it. His expression doesn't change much, but he wobbles on his feet and ends up leaning his shoulder against the wall for support. "Reckon we've got a couple of problems," he says.

When Sonny glances down, Mandy follows his gaze to where he's clamped his hand tight over his injured side. There's blood streaming between his fingers.

Mandy may not have the medical knowledge that Trent does, or even any other member of Bravo, but she knows enough to be aware that that rate of blood loss is a very bad thing.

Their time, already short, is running out even faster now.


	4. Workin' on Empty

With comms down and no immediate promise of backup, Bravo needs to find a better position than the damaged, soon-to-be-surrounded brick building. Accomplishing that goal requires a hell of a lot of shooting and a few well-placed explosions. Fortunately, the operators manage to eliminate tangos faster than they can be replaced, leaving Bravo a window for slipping unseen and unpursued into the depths of the eerily silent city.

They won't be able to stay hidden forever, but just having a little time to rest and regroup would do wonders. Spenser is pale and flagging, visibly struggling to stay on his feet and keep his gun raised, and Brock has developed an ugly limp that has him fighting to keep up.

Jason finds an empty office building to shelter in, and sends Ray up on overwatch so they'll be forewarned of trouble when it arrives. He puts down Bryson's body, rubs at his aching shoulder, and turns to help Trent evaluate their injured. The medic is leaned over Brock, checking his right calf, so Jason goes to Spenser.

The youngest member of Bravo has slid down against a wall, gun across his lap, and is staring straight ahead with a blank, glazed expression. Jason's first thought is that he missed a head injury, that Clay is concussed and confused. It's with a powerful sinking feeling that Hayes realizes they aren't that lucky.

Spenser's breathing is bad and getting worse. As Jason watches, his lips start to take on a blue cast. He appears to be focused inward, channeling every ounce of energy into getting oxygen into his lungs, but it's a battle he's obviously losing.

Jason's thoughts snap into sharp focus. Everything seems to slow down.

If the kid held out this long, then he's hopefully not too bad off to be saved - but they don't have much time.

"Trent." When the medic looks up, Jason jerks his head toward Spenser. "Clay's in trouble."

"I'm good. Go," Brock says immediately.

When Jason starts to shift back to give Trent better access to his patient, Clay's eyes snap open, pupils so wide they're almost swallowing the blue. He grabs Jason's wrist in a frantic, bruising grip. His lips form a silent word; it takes him three tries to suck in enough air to gasp faintly, "Help."

"We're gonna help you, buddy," Jason tells him. "Hang on. We're gonna help."

Whatever it was that the explosion did to Clay - hemothorax, pneumothorax, blast lung - a chest tube should hopefully buy him time. Enough? God only knows, but it's the best they can do right now.

As Jason helps Trent lay Spenser flat so they can put in the chest tube, it occurs to him that Sonny will kick all their asses if they don't manage to bring the kid back home alive. Stair-related mishaps aside, Clay is Sonny's best friend, and Quinn has stopped even bothering to pretend otherwise.

Sonny must be going nuts, stuck back at base while his team is in danger. While Jason misses the Texan's skills and steady presence, he can't help also feeling a little glad that at least there's _one _of his guys he can feel confident is safe right now.

Brock, pale but alert and stable, scoots over to help hold Spenser still while Trent inserts the tube. It's a process that obviously hurts like hell, but Clay is too weak to fight much, can't get enough air to cry out. He's still trying to hang onto Jason, but there's little strength left in his fingers.

For the first couple of minutes after the tube goes in and starts draining blood and air from Spenser's chest cavity, there's no visible improvement. Clay stares with wide-open, terrified eyes, hitching tiny gasps through blue lips, and Jason thinks maybe they waited too long, that Clay's respiratory collapse was already too far advanced by the time they did something about it.

If Jason had just picked a different building, brought them into shelter sooner, realized earlier how quickly the kid was deteriorating …

Spenser inhales more deeply, once, then again. He closes his eyes and breathes, the tension gradually easing out of his body as his oxygen levels start to rise. He's still horribly pale, hair matted with sweat, but the blue of his lips starts to fade back toward pink.

Jason squeezes his shoulder gently, tells him, "You're okay. You're good. We got you."

He hopes desperately that it's true. Clay needs a hospital, should probably be on a ventilator sooner rather than later, but what he's got is four teammates, basic field medical supplies, and a city that just became a war zone.

Trent wants to stay with his more critical patient, which means Jason ends up tending Brock's leg. He expects a bullet graze; what he finds instead is the sharp glint of shrapnel protruding from the calf muscle. It must have happened when the truck blew, though Brock swears he didn't feel it at the time. The bleeding isn't too bad and Brock can still walk, so Jason just bandages it to stabilize the impaled object and minimize blood loss. Afterward, he gives Brock a partial dose of morphine to help with the pain that his eyes are giving away, even if he won't admit to it.

Clay's condition has moved up their timetable for getting back to base. Before, Jason had entertained thoughts of finding a place to hole up, make a stand and wait for backup; now he realizes they likely can't do that without losing Spenser, which is an outcome none of them will accept.

They need a plan. Now.

Leaving Trent and Brock to watch over an exhausted, semiconscious Clay, Jason heads upstairs to consult with his 2IC.

Ray looks up, his faint smile of greeting fading when he sees Jason's expression. "What is it?"

Jason settles next to him, staring out over the quiet street. "Spenser's lung collapsed. He nearly suffocated before we got a chest tube in him."

Ray whistles quietly. "Damn. I thought he was okay."

"So did I, till it was almost too late." It occurs to Jason that he'll need to lecture Clay for not speaking up sooner, not telling them how bad off he was, but the thought just makes Hayes feel profoundly tired. He's weary of recriminations and apologies and guilt. He's got no energy left for being upset at the kid, not right now. He just wants him to live.

"He stable now?" Ray asks.

Jason hesitates. "Breathing, but he needs help, and I don't think he can wait long for it. Any way you can think of to get us back to base without getting tagged?"

Ray stares out the window. After a minute, he says, "Got one idea. Not sure how feasible it is."

"At this point, I'll consider just about anything," Jason tells him.

Ray nods. "Well, the only vehicles I've seen belong to the guys hunting us. Been watching them from up here. There's a set number, maybe a dozen, and they seem to recognize each other from a distance. Haven't seen any direct interaction. If we could steal one of those vehicles, we might be able to impersonate the cartel guys for long enough to slip through the gauntlet. Maybe." He pauses. "Hell of a risk, though."

"Best chance we've got," Jason says, "and the alternative is to stay here and watch Spenser die." He claps Ray on the shoulder. "Good thinking, Bravo Two."

There's still no response of any kind from HAVOC, which, paired with the obvious scale of what's going on here, makes Jason's gut churn. He figures he has no choice but to operate under the assumption that this is a comms issue and the base is still there and safe to return to. If that belief turns out to be incorrect, well, they'll just have to deal with that then. For now, getting back is priority one.

They wait a while so Ray, with his eye for patterns, can analyze the movement of the enemy vehicles. This serves two purposes: helping Bravo set up a successful interception, and boosting the team's chances of avoiding detection once they've commandeered a vehicle. They'll try to match the movement patterns for as long as they can.

Ray picks a van that seems to be regularly patrolling in the direction of the base, then circling back around again. He chooses the time and place for the ambush.

Trent hates leaving his patients, but Jason is now down three men and isn't comfortable attempting an interception with only two shooters. Brock, fingertips resting lightly on Clay's chest so he can monitor the rise and fall, tells them firmly that he's got it under control.

"Get us home," he says, holding Jason's gaze.

Brock is usually so quiet that even his teammates sometimes forget the degree of intensity he's capable of. Jason nods in response, feeling like he's been given an order - and is strangely okay with that.

Thanks to Ray's attention to detail, the interception goes down without a hitch. There are two tangos, both in the front, both of whom get taken out with suppressed fire through the rolled-down side windows. Once the vehicle is under their control, the healthy members of Bravo quickly drag the corpses out of sight, load Bryson's body and their own injured into the back of the van, and get moving again. Ray drives, and Brock sits up front with him; their coloring most closely matches that of the dead tangos.

In the back of the van, the tense silence is broken only by the shallow rasp of Spenser's breathing. His hair and the remnants of his T-shirt are sopping wet with sweat. His eyes are half open, but he doesn't seem able to focus. He doesn't reach out, or ask for help, or even appear to notice that any of them are there. In contrast to the earlier sharp, rapid decline, Jason has the sense that he's watching the kid fade now - gradually, quietly, but with the same ultimate destination.

It can't end like this, dammit. They have to get him to a hospital.

With the action over for the moment, suddenly left with nothing to do, Jason feels his skin hum with tension. He digs a paperclip out of his pocket, bends it into new shapes, steadies himself and breathes through the inaction.

The trip goes smoothly for what seems like a long time. Clay stubbornly keeps breathing. No one shoots at them or blows them up. Jason has just finished thinking to himself that they surely must be nearing the base by now when the van suddenly slows, then pulls to a stop.

Outside, there's agitated yelling in Spanish.

"We've got a problem, boss," Ray calls back quietly.

Jason closes his eyes, just for an instant.

They came so damn close to making it back.


	5. Never Fret None

Sonny stays on his feet for longer than Mandy expects.

He keeps steady pressure on the broken-open wound in his side, which helps some but obviously isn't going to be enough in the long run. The bandage he applied earlier is soaked through and no longer having much effect, and they don't have any other medical supplies. No hemostatic gauze. No clotting powder. None of the things Quinn would have access to if he were in the field with Bravo rather than stumbling around Santa Clotilda, dressed as a tourist, in the company of a woman Mandy is well aware he sometimes refers to as a 'good idea fairy.'

If they survive this, which is feeling less and less likely, Mandy doubts Sonny will ever be willing to go anywhere with her again. The man has a truly impressive ability to hold a grudge, even in situations where the targets of said grudges aren't strictly to blame.

They keep going. Blood trickles through Sonny's fingers, forming a rusty stain that steadily spreads down the leg of his jeans. When he starts to stumble a bit, Mandy tries to casually slide over next to him to offer support, only to be warned off by a withering glare that implies she might get a limb bitten off if she tries anything.

That resolve lasts maybe another fifteen minutes before Quinn trips over his own feet and Mandy has to lunge forward to keep him from falling. The man is pale, his eyes are glazed, and he's visibly struggling to stay on his feet. When Mandy pulls his arm over her shoulder so she can help him walk, he huffs and mumbles something but doesn't try to move away.

With Sonny growing steadily more confused and less aware, Mandy feels the entire weight of their survival coming to rest on her. It's a crushing responsibility for someone who isn't really trained for it. She tries to pay attention, to ask herself what Jason would do. She looks for the darkest corners to pause in, the remotest alleyways to travel.

In the midday heat, supporting much of Sonny's weight, she starts to wear down. Sweat glues her hair to her face. Her muscles ache. Her head throbs incessantly. She keeps having to rest more and more often, her shaking hands and growing nausea making her wonder if the fall on the sidewalk left her with a concussion - or maybe it's just dehydration. The day is sweltering and they've had not a drop of water, which of course only serves to worsen the impact of Sonny's blood loss.

By some miracle, they make it most of the way to the outskirts of the city. The jungle is in sight, rising up just a few streets away, when Sonny finally goes down and she can't get him back up again.

She pulls him behind the flimsy cover of a dumpster and slides down next to him. A puff of wind briefly cools the sweat on her face, and she closes her eyes.

The revving of an engine, much too close, freezes the air in Mandy's lungs. By the time the car finally moves on, her chest is burning for lack of oxygen. She has just gasped in a breath of relief when she hears voices, maybe a couple streets over. Are they moving closer? Searching for her? She wishes she knew more Spanish. She wishes Clay were here to translate. Jason to plan. Ray to tell her it's going to be okay.

She wishes they were all here, with their weapons and their calm and their competence. She wishes Sonny's life didn't rest in her hands, because she doesn't know how to not fail him.

The voices call to each other, and a horrible possibility suddenly occurs to Mandy. She risks poking her head out from behind the dumpster to look back the way they came. She can't see a visible blood trail, but with the way Sonny has been bleeding … well, it's entirely possible that their pursuers have been tracking them with relative ease.

The wind gusts again, stronger, carrying with it the smell of rain. A peal of thunder drowns out the voices for a moment. Mandy looks up to find that half the sky has been swallowed by the billowing front edge of a quick-moving storm.

This could be a good thing, she tells herself. They can capture rainwater to drink. If there's a trail, maybe it will get washed away - providing it isn't too late for that. Providing their pursuers don't already know where they are.

The wind whips around the edge of the building, carrying an eerie, hollow note. Thunder rumbles again. Mandy can't hear the voices anymore. She prays to Ray Perry's God that the searchers have moved on.

Just before the first fat drops of rain start to fall, a hand on Mandy's arm makes her jump. She glances over to see that Sonny has pushed himself upright against the wall and is staring at her with unnerving intensity. After a few seconds, he glances down at the Glock he's holding in trembling hands. He's so pale that even his lips look white.

"You're gonna need to go on without me," he says calmly.

She shakes her head.

"Mandy. You got to go."

"I can't," she whispers, her voice barely audible over the wind, the patter of beginning rain. "I can't just _leave_ you."

Wincing, he shifts so that he's more fully facing her. "Ellis. This is my job, all right? This is what guys like me do: we protect people like you. If we pay the price, then we just do." He holds her gaze. "I need your help to make sure it ain't for nothing. I need you to take over now."

Mandy looks at him, at his ashen face and shaking hands and rain-wet hair, and wants desperately to cry.

She regularly sends this man and the rest of his team into danger and knows she is doing so. It's part of her job, and if she's going to be effective at her job, she can't let herself spend too much time worrying about the men whose lives are so often in her hands.

But this? It wasn't supposed to happen like this. She just brought Sonny along as a favor, so he wouldn't be so bored. There wasn't supposed to be any danger, and she let her guard down. She let herself feel like she was just going out for coffee with a friend on a beautiful morning.

And there's her answer: now, at the end when it's too late, she realizes with certainty that she _does_ think of him as a friend. Hard as she tries to keep her distance, to stay far removed, they are all her friends, and she isn't supposed to have to watch any of them die. Not like this, up close and in real time.

Admitting that feels selfish and awful, but there it is. If her choices end in lost lives, which they sometimes do, she's supposed to be able to maintain a degree of distance from that. It's the only way she stays sane enough to keep doing what she does.

Sonny gives the Glock to her. "Last resort," he says quietly. "If you got to use it, then haul ass out of the area fast as you can, but try not to have to. Find a place to hide. Stay out of sight, and trust your instincts. I know you ain't had a lot of experience with situations like this, and I know you're scared, but you got good instincts. Blackburn and Bravo, they're comin' to get you, Mandy. You hang onto that. It's the only thing in the world matters right now. They're comin' for you, and you just got to keep yourself safe until they get here. You understand?"

She nods, looking down at the gun.

Men like Sonny Quinn, they tend to value the idea of the 'final blaze of glory.' If they go down, they want to be able to take someone with them.

Sonny won't even have that. He'll have nothing but the knife in his pocket, which he's too far gone to use.

He grabs her hand. His fingers are freezing, colder than the rain. "Tell me you got it."

"Yes," she says. "They will come for me."

"Not 'will,'" he says. "Betcha they already are." He pats her hand, breathes through a flash of pain that has him squeezing his eyes tightly shut, and then gives her a hint of a smile that makes her heart feel like it's cracking open. "You're gonna be okay, Ellis. You're gonna be just fine."

She nods again, trying to believe him.

"Listen…" He's fighting it, but his words are starting to slur. He lists to the side, leaned up against the wall, raindrops streaming down his face like tears. "Bravo … tell 'em it was an honor, all of it. I wouldn't change a damn thing." He draws a choppy breath. "Tell 'em it's all okay, and I'll be seein' 'em. Just better not be too soon."

There's that little smile again: pain and peace in equal measure.

Mandy touches her chest over her heart. She's not sure how it's possible to hurt this much and not be bleeding.

"I'll tell them," she whispers, her voice thick. "I promise."

He nods, letting his head fall back against the wall. His eyes slide closed.

"Sonny," she says. "I'm sorry."

For bringing him along. For getting him killed. For everything.

The corner of his mouth turns up. "'S all right, Mandy. Just go."

Her eyes film over with tears that turn the rain-wet world into a blurred watercolor painting. She blinks them away and goes.

Jason, she thinks, may never forgive her for this.

If he doesn't, they'll have that in common.


	6. Somehow Escape

Judging by the fact that Bravo hasn't yet been blown up or shot full of holes, the cartel guys must not have entirely figured out what's going on yet - but they don't exactly sound happy, either. Listening to the yelling, Jason wishes his Spanish were better, and also that his resident language guy weren't currently busy dying of blast-related respiratory trauma.

What Jason can manage to decipher suggests that the yelling has something to do with being out of place or off course. Ray had no choice but to deviate from the expected pattern, and it got noticed.

"Ready," Jason tells Trent quietly. They slide up close behind the front bench seat, stay down, wait until Ray gives the signal.

When the tangos outside realize something is very wrong and start to raise their guns, Ray yells, and then he and Brock fold themselves into the floorboards. Jason and Trent pop up from behind the seat and obliterate the windshield, and also the three tangos approaching from the front.

Unfortunately, they miss the fourth one who's off to the passenger side.

Jason and Trent have to hit the deck as bullets rip through the side of the van. Brock manages to get to his gun, claw his way out of the footwell, and take out the tango through the window without acquiring any new holes. He looks so pale afterward that Trent asks sharply if he's hit, but he shakes his head and says he just jarred his leg.

Ray pulls himself up, taking deep breaths. Jason looks at the sunlight streaming in through the fresh holes in the van and says, "More will be coming. We've got to move."

As Trent checks to confirm that Spenser wasn't hit and is still breathing, Ray tries to start up the van. It sputters and coughs, but grumbles to life on the second attempt.

A deep bass rumble shudders through the vehicle, and Jason stiffens until he realizes it's just thunder. The bright, scorching sunlight has abruptly disappeared as though God flipped a light switch. There's a storm on its way.

The good news is that Bravo makes it back to base, or at least to the newly erected barricade that's as close as they can get at the moment. The bad news is that comms are still down, so they end up getting shot at by local military and having to reverse straight back toward the cartel assholes they just got done escaping.

Ray drives them behind the nearest building for cover and turns off the van, which ticks in the sudden, loud silence.

Spenser's breathing has worsened, and his lips are starting to turn blue again. Trent looks like he's about to have a heart attack at the prospect of being this damn close and having to watch his patient die anyway.

Jason glances down at Clay, who somehow manages to look even younger now that he's dying. After brushing his fingers over the kid's hair, Hayes sighs, hops out of the van, and checks the road behind them, finding it clear of cartel guys for the moment.

"Jace," Ray calls, in that warning tone he uses when he senses his best friend is planning something especially stupid.

Jason hands off his gun to his 2IC. "They might recognize me," he says. "If they don't, well, you're just gonna have to figure something else out."

Ray puts a hand on Jason's arm, looks into his soul for a couple seconds, then finally sighs and gives a reluctant nod.

If anybody could offer a better idea, Jason would be happy to try it … but they've all got nothing, and he refuses to watch their kid die within sight of help. If Jason has to risk everything to save one of his guys, well, that's just what's gonna happen.

He walks out from behind the building slowly, hands up, face raised to make his features as visible as possible. He wishes the oncoming clouds hadn't stolen the sunlight. He hopes like hell that at least one of the guys stationed at the blockade is familiar with him.

Jason is accustomed to facing down danger. He just isn't used to being this helpless when he does.

In the eerie pre-storm hush, Jason's heart thuds heavily in his chest. He takes a couple shuffling steps forward, hands still raised, fingers splayed wide to show that they're empty. He calls out in English, using his name, giving his identity.

A few of the guys pop up from behind the barricade, guns still raised. They motion him closer. He goes.

The soldier on the far left is the first to recognize Jason with certainty. He lowers the gun, smiles, calls out in accented English. After a brief pause, the other rifles go down as well.

Jason goes jittery with relief. He lowers his hands and starts to turn to yell back to his guys that it's safe to come out now, that they're gonna be able to get Clay help, that everything is okay.

Naturally, that's when one of the cartel assholes shoots him from behind.

The bullet feels like a punch to the side. Jason goes down hard, head spinning. He struggles to draw a breath. The pavement feels warm against his cheek. Rain has started to fall. There's thunder and gunfire, and he can't tell them apart.

Jason gets his palm flat against the ground, but can't find the strength to push himself up. Manages to muster enough brainpower to realize he shouldn't even if he could, not unless he wants to get shot again. He closes his eyes against the rain, breathes raggedly, and waits for the gunfire to stop.

He doesn't realize he's drifting until Trent's hand on his neck draws him back. Jason manages to peel his eyes open far enough to see that Ray, water running down his face, is yelling at him, something about getting up.

The pain in his side sits somewhere between grating and searing. The rain has soaked through his clothes so that he can't tell if he's bleeding. He grits his teeth, takes Ray's offered hand, and staggers to his feet with a muffled yell of agony.

Yep, something is definitely broken, and seems to be shifting around when he moves.

A couple of the local military guys have put Clay on a stretcher and are carrying him through the downpour toward the barricade. With Ray on one side of him and Trent on the other, Jason makes it into cover, where Brock is already waiting, his injured leg stretched out in front of him.

The shooting starts back up again just seconds after Bravo makes it into relative safety. The local soldiers are successfully fending off the cartel for the moment. Fuzzy-headed though he may be, Jason feels pretty confident in his belief that that won't last forever.

Blackburn meets them outside the base, helps Jason walk the rest of the way inside. Medics are swarming Clay. Jason, who is starting to feel marginally clearer-headed and less in agony, waves one of them off in Brock's direction and just has Trent check him over.

Jason's vest caught the bullet, or he'd probably be dead. As it is, he does have a couple very broken ribs, and Trent squints suspiciously at the black bruising and says there might be some slow internal bleeding as well. The base infirmary isn't really equipped to deal with that sort of thing, so they just wrap the ribs for stability and hope for the best.

Jason jerks his head toward the flurry of motion surrounding a silent, ashen Spenser. "They gonna be able to save him?"

Trent stops halfway through wrapping Jason's ribs. In a quiet, hollow voice, he says, "No."

The air seems to rush out of the room. Brock makes a soft, strangled noise.

"Not here," Trent clarifies quickly. "They don't have the training or the equipment. If they airlift him out ASAP, get him to a better hospital…" He trails off.

"Then?" Ray prompts.

Trent sighs and resumes wrapping. "Then I give him a 50-50 chance. Maybe."

Jason absorbs that, hates it, but realizes there's not much he can do to change it. His eyes slide past Clay to the covered body lying on another gurney, and he gets a sharp spike of shame when he realizes he'd almost entirely forgotten about Bryson, the man they were supposed to have been protecting this morning, which already feels like a thousand years ago.

Glancing up, Jason sees that Blackburn is also looking at the body. Sighing, Hayes says, "Eric…"

Blackburn rests a hand on his shoulder. "I know you did the best you could," he says simply.

Jason remembers Clay, with his haunted eyes and damaged lungs, shielding the man he didn't know was already dead. Remembers him repeating that he was sorry.

"Yeah," he responds quietly. "Yeah, we did."

Blackburn gives him a nod. "They're prepping a helo for Spenser," he tells them. "We'll get him out of here, Jason. We'll get him help."

"Good," Jason says. "Everybody else needs to get out, too. Sooner the better."

The base is small, perfectly adequate for the peaceful Santa Clotilda of the past, but ill-equipped to hold off a siege. It's going down. Just a matter of time.

Eric hesitates, his eyes darting away like they do when there's something he doesn't want to say. And that's when Jason realizes they haven't seen Sonny yet.

With Clay in critical condition, Sonny should be here, hovering, fretting, making a great big Texan nuisance of himself. And he's not.

"Eric?" Jason says pleasantly. "Anything you want to tell us?"

The others pick up on the dangerous tone in his voice and fall quiet, listening, all attention focused on Blackburn.

Eric sighs and raises his chin to look at them squarely. "Mandy took Sonny with her into the city for a routine meeting this morning." He pauses. "We haven't heard from them since. Jason … we've got no idea where they are or even if they're still alive."

Well. So much for leaving.

Pressing his arm against his broken ribs for support, Jason leans forward. "Tell us what you know. Everything."

There has to be some way to get his people back.

If there isn't, he'll goddamn well make one.


	7. Be Brave Again

The rain comes down like a waterfall, washing out the rest of the world. Mandy is soaked through in minutes; the sharp shift from the earlier afternoon heat leaves her shivering and miserable. (The grief and guilt and abject terror probably don't help.)

The storm makes it hard to see and even harder to hear. Being surrounded by an opaque curtain of rain gives Mandy a sense of isolation and aloneness in the midst of the silent city. She knows it's a mirage, that she could turn any corner and come face to face with a bullet, but she keeps going anyway. Forces herself to focus, to pay attention, to see details, catalog them, evaluate them for relevance.

That's likely the only reason she notices the window.

It's hardly a window at all, really just a dingy sliver of glass, barely visible in a wall just above street level. When Mandy spots it, the rain has just started to slow, and the sun is threatening to poke through a thin spot in the clouds. The growing brightness glints off the wet, dirty glass, and Mandy stops in her tracks.

Why is there a window in the wall at street level?

Basements are uncommon in this part of the world - nearly unheard of, in fact. Maybe a small root cellar for storing food?

She circles around the silent, empty building. There, hidden behind a tangle of trees and vines: a small, rusty door leading belowground.

It's either an excellent hiding spot, or a trap from which there would be no escape if found.

Mandy hesitates. She's so close to the jungle where Sonny told her to hide. The smartest thing to do, probably, would be to keep going.

Thanks to the caution with which Mandy was moving through the heavy rain, she hasn't yet made it that far from where she left Sonny. He's just a couple alleys and a street away. If he's still there … if they haven't found him yet …

In the concealment of the thick foliage, she runs her fingers through her soaked, matted hair and swears quietly.

Beyond the obvious not-wanting-to-die-horribly aspect of this situation, there's also the fact that Mandy isn't just a person, she's an asset. In cartel hands, she would be used as a weapon - against the other cartels, against the U.S. government, against everyone who isn't them.

She guesses Sonny would tell her it's her responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen. He would tell her to keep going.

Well, screw that. Sonny Quinn isn't the boss of her.

She straightens her shoulders and heads back the way she came.

In the quiet that follows the storm, all is still but for the steady drip of rainwater off leaves and the edges of roofs. Mandy hugs close to buildings, slides into the spaces beneath hanging vines, listens but hears nothing. No voices. No engines. Just dripping and the soft shush of her own feet against stone.

With the curtain of rain now drawn back, she makes better time back to where she left Sonny. He's there, silent and still, hidden in the shadow of the dumpster. Mandy watches the faint rise and fall of his chest and is left dizzy by a wave of relief that she hasn't risked it all for nothing.

Sonny's bleeding appears to have slowed. Mandy doesn't have enough medical knowledge to guess at what that means, but she hopes it's a good sign rather than a bad one.

She tucks the Glock Quinn gave her into the back of her waistband and kneels at his side. "Sonny. I found a place to hide, but you have to get up so I can get you there."

Nothing.

"_Sonny,"_ she hisses, rubbing her knuckles hard over his sternum. He groans, a sad, slurred sound, and his eyelids flutter briefly before closing again.

Afraid to get too loud, but needing him to hear, she leans in close. "Sonny. _Get up."_

He mumbles something incomprehensible and manages to get his hand up enough to try to push her away. She makes out, "Told you to…" before his voice dissolves back into unintelligible slurring.

"Well, I came back, and now I'm not going anywhere unless you get up." She leans in until her lips are inches from his ear, and then she pours every ounce of her terror and exhaustion and frustration into making her voice as vicious as possible. "I didn't take you for a coward, Sonny Quinn. I thought Texans were better than this. Your mama would be ashamed of you."

_That_ gets his eyes open, and the look he gives her would frighten her very much indeed if he weren't currently too weak to do anything about it.

_Do what's necessary. Apologize later._ She plows ahead. "You said keeping me alive was your job. Well, if you stay here, you're as good as killing me, so get off your ass and _do your job_, Bravo Three."

After a few more seconds of glaring at her with an expression that somehow manages to be both furious and listless, Sonny starts trying to push himself up. His legs are obviously weak and unsteady. Sliding beneath his arm, Mandy manages to support him enough for them to stagger along together, mostly without even falling.

Progress is agonizingly slow. Mandy feels the weight of phantom gazes crawling over her skin, the unrelenting tension burning through her bones and leaving her exhausted. Her legs shake with the strain of supporting most of Quinn's weight. She's never previously minded being more willowy than strong, but now swears to herself that if she survives, there will be more frequent gym visits in her future.

She expects shouts, gunfire, vehicular pursuit, but it never comes. After what feels like an eternity, she finally shakily lowers Sonny down, behind the curtain of vines and leaves, to sit beside the door that leads belowground. His eyes immediately slide closed.

Mandy opens the rusty door as quietly as she can, but the creak of it still makes her wince. The post-storm sunshine reveals damp concrete stairs descending to a wet floor surrounded by the dark shapes of untidy shelves. It will be crowded, but she and Sonny should have enough room - if she can just get them both down there.

She looks at Sonny, who appears well and truly unconscious again. She sighs.

In the end, she manages to drag him over and maneuver him through the door first, lowering him down ahead of her. She hooks her elbows under his armpits and keeps her weight back, sliding on her butt from one step down to the next until they reach the bottom.

By then, Mandy is shaking, her head is pounding, and she's so nauseated that she immediately has to find a corner to throw up in. That done, she checks to make sure Sonny is propped up and won't drown in the couple inches of water on the floor. Then she crawls back up the stairs and shuts the door behind them, plunging the small space into almost complete darkness.

The cellar smells like mold and spoiled food. Mandy has never really been claustrophobic or afraid of the dark, but now she feels horribly, unbearably trapped. Sliding back down the stairs, she feels her way back over to Sonny, sits down in the putrid water beside him, and forces herself to breathe, to clear her mind of everything except where she is right now and what she needs to do next.

No thinking of possibilities, what-ifs, fears. Jason wouldn't let any of those things interfere with his focus in the field, so she won't either. She'll do what needs to be done. Like she did to get Sonny on his feet.

Think: What does she need? A way to contact Blackburn, tell him where they are, ask for help.

What does she have? A gun, an unconscious (possibly dying) Navy SEAL, and a broken phone.

_How _broken?

She digs the flip phone out of her damp front pocket and opens it. The screen lights up in its blotchy, damaged way, and it occurs to her that the fact that she can't see the phone working doesn't necessarily mean it isn't.

She pushes a number button, listens, hears nothing. Her heart sinks into her stomach until she thinks to turn the volume at the side all the way up. This time when she pushes the 1, a beep sounds through the speaker, soft but unmistakable.

Pulse racing with desperate, dangerous hope, Mandy hits the red 'end call' button to hopefully erase the numbers she's already entered, dials Blackburn's local number, and pushes the green button that should (_please please please_) put the call through.

It rings. And then he answers.

Mandy very much wants to burst into tears. Instead she takes a deep breath and says, in a surprisingly even tone, "Hi, Eric. I think we might need a little help here."


	8. To Its Reckoning

Jason and Eric are 15 minutes into an unproductive conversation about the impossible task of finding a needle (Mandy and Sonny) in a haystack (a small city that's now under cartel control) when the solution to that problem arrives in a very unexpected way: Mandy calls and asks for help.

They don't currently have the means to track her call, but it turns out they don't need to. Mandy, glacially calm, recites the names of the nearest streets and describes her current location with precision.

Jason listens without interrupting, making note of the voice he isn't hearing. Once Mandy is done talking, he asks, "Sonny with you?"

The pause before she answers cuts deeper than the grate of broken ribs. Jason braces himself for the worst, but Mandy says, "Yes. He's here and alive, but unconscious. He was stabbed and has lost a lot of blood." There's another hesitation before she says, her voice wavering a bit for the first time, "I did the best I could for him."

"I know," Jason tells her, with certainty anchored by years of trust. "I know you did, Mandy."

Now that they know their people are alive and have a location on them, there's just one tiny, huge problem remaining: getting Mandy and Sonny the hell out of there. Most of a cartel-controlled city sits between the base and that root cellar.

The vehicle trick won't work a second time, and even if it would, Bravo has a grand total of two healthy operators to work with. Clay is out of commission for a long time (if he even survives), Brock has shrapnel in his leg, and Jason himself is nursing broken ribs and a slight case of possible internal bleeding.

Given the scope of the cartel's reach and the amount of work that clearly went into planning this coup, Jason immediately rejects the obvious idea of just sending local military after Sonny and Mandy. Absolutely anybody could have been turned by now - willingly or otherwise.

While Eric and Jason are trying to figure out what the hell they're going to do, Trent shows up with an update on Spenser, who is still alive and has been put in a helo for transport now that the storm has passed. Helpless and vulnerable as the kid is right now, none of them could bear the thought of him being sent off unprotected and surrounded by nothing but strangers, so he's being accompanied by part of the Bravo support team.

As for Spenser's likely prognosis, Trent avoids specifics and tries to sound positive, but Jason knows him well enough to pick up on the underlying worry. He pulls at that thread until Trent admits, "He was already hypoxic by the time they got him on the flight. I'm not sure if…" He trails off, shakes his head.

Jason knows there are a lot of ugly possibilities dangling at the end of that cut-off sentence. He doesn't dwell on them, because they've done for Clay what they can. He's protected and headed for a hospital. Whether he lives - and in what state - is no longer within Bravo's control. Whether Quinn and Ellis live? That might be.

Trent's mention of the helo gives Jason an idea. Getting through the city to Sonny and Mandy's location likely isn't feasible, but the location Mandy described is very close to the edge of the jungle. Could they come in from there?

Blackburn trusts the local commander, believes it's unlikely he's under cartel influence, so Jason lets him go do some negotiating. In the meantime, Hayes has the remaining support staff pull up sat photos of the jungle near the eastern edge of town, where Mandy and Sonny are hidden.

By the time Eric comes back with the news that he's managed to talk his way into borrowing a helo, Jason has picked his spot. Beyond a ridgeline just outside the city lies a level area where the jungle has been cleared by farmers. Jason believes it's far enough out to avoid detection, but close enough that his team should be able to manage the hike.

In addition to the helo, the local commander also hand-picked four of his most trusted men to send along, including a pilot. Jason balks before reluctantly agreeing. They'll need to carry Sonny out, and Hayes barely has enough healthy guys left to manage that unopposed, let alone while handling any potential cartel contact.

For a few minutes, there's carefully controlled chaos as they throw things together as quickly as possible. The local commander made it clear that the evacuation will proceed on schedule, and responsibility for getting back before the base is overrun rests entirely on Bravo. Time matters a hell of a lot right now, and not only to Mandy and Sonny's chances of survival.

After Trent re-wraps his ribs as tightly as he can stand, Jason straps his vest back on over the top. Trent tells him matter-of-factly that he'll more than likely die if he gets hit in the vest again. Jason shrugs and moves on to arguing with Brock about whether he should be allowed back into the field with shrapnel still in his calf. Trent has judged that the metal is too deeply embedded to remove without surgery, which Brock can't get without going to a hospital, which he currently refuses to do.

After listening to Brock's impassioned explanation that it is only a _small_ piece of shrapnel and didn't even hit an artery or anything, Jason gives in, but tells him, "You've got to be able to keep up. And if you end up bleeding out or dying of sepsis or something, I'll kill you myself."

"Roger that," Brock says, with obvious relief that he's not getting left behind.

Their pilot takes them out away from the city, circling back behind the ridgeline to land in a fallow field. Jason's instincts bristle at leaving the pilot alone and unsupervised with the helo, but the commander trusts the man and Blackburn trusts the commander, so Hayes forces himself to just let it go and hope for the best.

They make decent time. Not exactly fast, but acceptable. Brock limps but keeps up with the pace his team leader sets - which, granted, isn't as quick as usual, because Jason's ribs hurt like hell and he's maybe also feeling a little dizzy.

The quickest path into Santa Clotilda takes them around the far edge of the ridgeline and through a grove of kapok trees. When they reach the outskirts of the city, everyone grows quieter and more alert, keenly aware that danger could be hiding in any shadow. This far out, the streets are only sporadically paved, and the neighborhoods are mostly made up of shacks rather than the sturdier brick or stone buildings that are more common in the city center.

Down a few alleys and across a couple of uneven roads, they find the cellar door hiding behind a screen of foliage, exactly as Mandy described it.

Jason doesn't want his cause of death to be 'shot by friend,' so he knocks gently a couple times and calls, as loudly as he dares, "Mandy? It's me."

There's a muffled, inaudible reply, quiet scuffling, and then Mandy flings open the door and stares up at them from the top of the stairs.

She looks terrible. Her face is ghost-pale and she's filthy, her clothes and exposed skin smeared with dirt and blood. Her wet hair is matted, half pulled down from its updo, untidy strands clinging to her face.

"Jason," she says, with only the faintest tremor in her voice. "It's good to see you."

He grins at her, offers his hand, tries to hide his wince as he pulls her up and his ribs scream at him for it. Turns out he didn't need to worry about Mandy noticing right now, because she's too busy turning away and puking.

When Trent starts to head over, Mandy squares her shoulders, spits out the last of the bile, and tells him firmly, "I'm dehydrated and might have a mild concussion. See to Sonny. His condition is much more serious."

Trent meets Jason's gaze and raises his eyebrows: _Take care of her._ After Jason nods in acknowledgement, the medic heads down the stairs to check Sonny and help move him out of the cellar.

Jason gives Mandy his canteen. "Tiny sips."

While she rinses her mouth and drinks, he shifts, trying to find a position that will ease the incessant throbbing in his side. He's starting to feel like he might join the vomit parade sometime soon.

Handing back the canteen, Mandy narrows her eyes at him. "You're injured."

He sighs. "Took a bullet to the vest. I'm fine."

"Of course you are," Mandy says, in a flatly disbelieving tone.

"Yep," he agrees. "Just like you are."

Despite the dire situation they're still in, despite his ribs and her head and their nausea, they smile at each other.

Right about then, Sonny gets brought up the stairs. Mandy moves toward him, wobbles, and has to stop to breathe. Jason takes her elbow to steady her, and she lets him, which says a lot about just how badly today has gone.

They all want to get moving ASAP, but Trent doesn't like Sonny's blood pressure. After securely bandaging his patient's side, he requests permission to start a transfusion before they get moving, which Jason immediately grants. They didn't come all this way just to risk losing Quinn on the way to the helo.

Sonny is so pale that Jason has to rest a hand on his chest just to convince himself that the man is still breathing, but once the transfusion gets going, it doesn't take him long to start coming around. First thing he does is try to get free of the straps that are keeping him from rolling off the stretcher.

When Jason barks at him to stop, he stills, mumbling, "Mandy? Jace, she's-"

"Right here," Mandy tells him, patting his arm. "I'm here. I'm fine."

Sonny squints up at her. "Hey, Ellis," he slurs. His gaze travels from her to Jason, and then he fuzzily looks around until he locates Trent, Brock, Ray. When his eyes make it back to his team leader's face, Jason knows what's coming next.

"Where…" Sonny trails off, sounding confused. "'S Clay?"

"Spenser's a little banged up," Jason says, his voice calm and steady. "He'll be waiting for us at the hospital."

Under normal circumstances, Quinn would see through the half-lie, but he's so out of it that he just nods a little and goes back under.

Jason looks up and meets Mandy's gaze. She raises her eyebrows and moves in close so she can ask in a whisper, "Bad?"

Jason clears his throat and responds just as quietly, "Yeah. Still alive last we knew, but…"

He trails off. Mandy nods. There's not much else to say.

Two of the local guys end up carrying Sonny's stretcher, leaving Trent free to move between patients, of which he has several. Sonny is obviously the most critical, but Bravo's medic also has to keep checking in on Brock's leg; Jason's vitals; Mandy's concussion that's making it hard for her to keep down even a sip of water.

With Brock stumbling and starting to run a low fever, Sonny out of commission and Trent preoccupied with medical tasks, Jason and Ray are left carrying most of the responsibility for getting everyone back to the helo safely. They do their best to keep the group herded together, to stay alert for any sign of trouble. Neither of them relaxes even a little until they leave the city behind and disappear into the shelter and relative safety of the jungle.

They've just reached the edge of the kapok grove when the quietest of the local soldiers, the one not helping carry Sonny, sidles over to where Ray and Mandy are walking side by side. Jason is just near enough to hear the man say, in faintly accented English, "I think we are being followed."

Ray immediately tenses. "You hear something?" He starts to turn to look behind them.

The soldier shoots him in the back at point-blank range.

Sidestepping Ray's falling body, the man grabs Mandy, wrenches her head back and uses her body as a shield, pressing his pistol to her temple.

Jason's shock lasts only a fraction of an instant. There's the shot, and Mandy, and _Ray_-

An instant is too long. The tango's aim shifts, from Mandy's temple to Jason's chest. Slowed by injury and exhaustion, Hayes tries to react, but he doesn't have an angle.

Jason braces. The gun barks, but the impact doesn't come. Instead, there's a blur of motion, and Trent goes down in a spray of blood almost before Jason has a chance to realize the medic has jumped in front of him.

The tango returns his aim to Mandy's temple. She's sheet-white, her eyes huge with terror as he drags her back. Voice shaking, the soldier says, "I'm taking her. I'm going now."

Jason's side hurts. His guys are down, maybe dead. He doesn't have a shot.

Mandy meets his gaze. She mouths, _Let him._ She mouths, _Trust me._

It's one of the hardest things Jason has ever done.

He lets her go.


	9. No Grave

Mandy's head was already pounding _before_ she had someone yanking on her hair and firing a gun right past her ear. As the pain escalates to blinding and the man drags her back, away from the group, she struggles to orient herself, to think.

Ray and Trent are down. Like Sonny. Maybe worse.

Enough.

Mandy meets Jason's gaze. Fighting back the pain and the terror and the desperate need for him to _save me, Jason, please,_ she shakes her head minutely and mouths four words:

_Let him. Trust me._

Despite their years of working together, despite the hard-won understanding they've built, part of her is still shocked when Jason actually does what she asks.

The soldier pulls her back into the trees, using her as a shield until they're well away from the others with no sign of pursuit. The man is pale, and shaking every bit as hard as Mandy is. Dragging her along by the elbow, gun pressed against her ribs, he mutters to himself in agitated Spanish, finally switching to English to tell her, "I'm sorry. I have no choice."

Mandy doesn't dignify that with a response. For one thing, she's too focused on staying on her feet, afraid that falling might get her shot by her jumpy, near-hysterical captor.

Here's the thing about Mandy Ellis's brain: it never truly shuts down. Not when she's exhausted; not when she's hurt; not even when she's frightened beyond all reason. Sometimes that feels like a curse, such as when she's trying to relax or wind down or fall asleep.

Then there are the moments when lives depend on it.

The man who shot Ray and Trent, who kidnapped Mandy to bring back to the cartel, is no cold-blooded enforcer. He's desperate and terrified. Desperate, terrified people make mistakes.

Inevitably, he does.

His firm, bruising grip on Mandy's right arm never wavers, but he doesn't pay attention to where her left hand is. That's his first mistake.

When they get far enough out into the jungle, he lets his gun barrel drop away from her ribs. That's his second mistake.

Mandy's heart pounds in her ears, loud against the quiet. Everything slows down. She breathes through the pain, blinks against the blur in her vision, and then she pulls Sonny's Glock from the back of her waistband and shoots her captor twice in the spine.

It doesn't take him all that long to die. In the few minutes he has left, he looks up at her, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes, and begs to see his family.

It's not hard to put the pieces together. The cartel has them. They're probably already dead. Mandy doesn't tell him that, and she doesn't leave, not until he stops breathing. Then she pushes herself up, swiping half-heartedly at her wet face, and stumbles back the way they came. She's still holding the gun. She doesn't even know if there are any bullets left in it.

She wants today to be over now. She wants to go home.

Jason's voice floats in from somewhere, calling Mandy's name. She doesn't respond, just keeps staggering forward until he catches her by the arms and gently takes the gun out of her hand. Then she looks up at him and reports, "He's dead. The soldier. I shot him."

With the storm long past, the sun has come out again. Mandy knows the heat should be stifling. She feels cold anyway.

Jason is very pale. "You did good, Mandy," he tells her, and pulls her into a hug, easing her aching head down against his shoulder. Shivering, she stands in the embrace until her scattered mind pulls itself together enough to remember: Ray. Trent.

She pulls back, wiping at her face, looking beyond Jason, through the trees toward where the others should be.

Following her gaze, Jason assures her, "Everybody's alive. It could have been a lot worse."

Mandy nods but can't quite believe him, remembering how he'd deceived Sonny about Spenser. She needs to see for herself, but her knee buckles when she tries to take a step forward. Jason catches her elbow before she goes down. Keeps his arm around her shoulders all the way back to the rest of the group.

Sonny is still on the stretcher, still unconscious. The men who were carrying him are being watched by a feverish Brock, though Jason admits there's no evidence they were involved.

Trent is awake and sitting up, tightly pressing a bandage to the outside of his upper left arm, where he is missing a large chunk of flesh. Seeing Mandy's expression, he gives her a pale, strained smile. "It's all right. Don't think it hit bone. Just gotta get the bleeding stopped."

She wants to argue that there's really no scenario in which 'I'm missing a section of my arm' can be anything other than categorically _not_ all right, but she's afraid she'll throw up if she opens her mouth, so she just nods slightly and moves on to Ray.

He's lying flat on his back, staring at the sky. Eventually he scrapes together enough focus to notice Mandy and give her a glazed, loopy smile. "Y'know," he slurs, "morphine … 's nice."

Jason rolls his eyes fondly. "Yes, Ray. We know."

Trent, adding another layer of gauze to the saturated bandage on his arm, says, "Bullet didn't go through the armor, but it did plenty of damage anyway."

"I'm okay," Ray announces, with a level of optimism that should not be compatible with recently having been shot in the back.

Jason snorts. "How would you know? You're higher than a kite."

Ray thinks about this. "Yep," he agrees.

Mandy, whose nausea seems to be easing off, risks opening her mouth to say, "Well, at least he doesn't seem to be in any pain."

"Yeah." Jason rubs at his face, the amusement quickly fading. Quietly, he adds, "Morphine's just masking it. He needs a hospital."

Mandy doesn't bother pointing out that they probably all do - including Jason, who is visibly hurting, arm pressed against his ribs. She doubts he's had much pain medication. He'll want to stay clear-headed, especially now that his entire team is injured.

With time being critical for more than one reason, they need to get moving. The two able-bodied local soldiers will be able to resume carrying the stretcher, leaving the rest of them to try to figure it out for themselves. Trent, though shaky and wearing deep pain lines around his eyes, has gotten his bleeding under control and says he's good to walk. Brock's skin radiates heat and his limp is ugly, but he refuses help, insisting Ray needs it more.

Which turns out to be true, because Ray can't control his legs … or feel them, really.

Mandy is more grateful than ever for the morphine, which shields Perry from understanding just how bad this could be.

The rest of them huddle, valiantly trying to hold themselves together. Trent decides they need to move Sonny so they can use the stretcher to secure Ray and try to prevent further spinal injury. Of course, that leaves the issue of getting Sonny to the helo, but with Quinn's blood loss stopped and the transfusion complete, Trent thinks he might be able to get Bravo Three back on his feet. Maybe.

In the end, Ray goes on the stretcher, with an ice pack under him to hopefully help control the swelling. Brock and Trent walk under their own power. Mandy and Jason each take one side of Sonny, who is barely coherent but just awake enough to stumble along with help.

They make it back to the helo, where their pilot is faithfully waiting.

But not soon enough.

Blackburn contacts them from the air to let them know that the small base in Santa Clotilda has been fully evacuated. They can't go back there. And they don't have enough fuel to reach the nearest larger base, the one where Blackburn is headed.

Mandy, exhausted, leaning against the side of the helo to try to make the world stop spinning, finds the responsibility for their survival unexpectedly coming to rest on her shoulders.

She needs to come up with a way for them to refuel without getting captured or killed. More than a decade of building relationships and cultivating assets comes down to this: she has minutes to comb through them all and find someone who, A, has fuel; B, will be willing to let them use said fuel; and C, won't call in the cartel the instant they land.

In the end, she comes up with three possible locations, which Blackburn then has his people check with ISR to try to make sure cartel enforcers aren't already on the ground. They end up settling on a wealthy CEO's remote vacation home. It's within range (barely), he has his own private airstrip with a couple of helicopters, and there's no sign of any unwanted visitors.

Mandy fully expects some kind of horrible surprise, but refueling goes off without a hitch.

By the time they make it to their destination, Brock, Ray and Sonny are all unconscious. Jason is pale and obviously exhausted, but seems more or less stable. As for Trent, Mandy is pretty sure he's keeping himself conscious via sheer force of will and the unshakable conviction that everyone will die the instant he isn't awake to take care of them.

Things gray out for a while. Mandy comes back to herself in a hospital with an IV in her arm. Apparently, as the closest competent and secure medical facility that was available, it's also where all of Bravo has ended up.

Blackburn, who keeps making the rounds with the quiet anxiety of a mama cat whose kittens have gotten scattered, gives Mandy an update once she's coherent enough to understand and retain it.

Ray Perry doesn't appear to have any permanent spinal damage, just some very nasty swelling that was causing the numbness. He's on steroids to reduce the inflammation. The doctors are cautiously optimistic that he'll make a full recovery.

Jason will remain under observation for a while, but they don't think he'll need surgery. His ribs didn't puncture anything important and the bleeding appears to be resolving on its own.

Trent has a truly impressive number of stitches and ended up needing a transfusion of his own, but should be fine in the long run.

Brock, having received powerful antibiotics and undergone surgery to remove the shrapnel from his leg, is already feeling well enough to badger Blackburn about when he'll be able to reunite with Cerberus.

Sonny Quinn is weak and barely coherent, but he'll be okay with plenty of rest and fluids. He hasn't yet stayed awake long enough for them to give him the news that's going to hit him hard.

Which brings the conversation to the final member of Bravo.

Clay is stable and should be able to get weaned off the ventilator at some point in the next few days. The question is whether he got help soon enough; whether the person who wakes up will even still be the man they knew. Blackburn, looking at the wall and holding his voice steady with obvious effort, says there's a lot they won't know until Clay regains consciousness.

Mandy soon grows unbearably bored and manages to talk her way out of bed. After visiting the others, she spends some time sitting with Spenser, explaining to him that he has to recover because she can't be expected to deal with Sonny on her own.

His utter stillness and the steady _whoosh_ of the ventilator eventually makes her feel like she's the one who can't breathe. She blames the emotional response on her concussion.

Through sheer bad luck, Mandy ends up being the one at Sonny's bedside when he finally regains consciousness for more than a couple minutes. Which means she also gets to be the person who has to answer his questions about his team. Including Clay.

She tries to downplay things a bit, sticking to the basic facts: the nature of the injury; the fact that Spenser has been stabilized and should be off the ventilator soon. Based on the way Quinn goes very quiet, she guesses he must have seen right through her. She blames the concussion for that, too.

The silence stretches. She's not sure if he wants to talk more right now, especially not with her, but there's something that needs to be said, so she takes a breath and tells him, "Thank you. For saving my life."

Without looking at her, he nods, clears his throat. "Just my job, Mandy."

She shakes her head. "You were already injured. I shouldn't have even put you in that position. But if you hadn't been there, I would have died horribly, so…" Her voice wobbles away into nothing, which makes her cheeks burn with embarrassment.

"So, I'm glad I was," Sonny says matter-of-factly, which for some reason makes Mandy feel even more like she's going to cry.

There's one more thing that needs to be discussed. Once Mandy has her emotions back under control, she begins, "Look, what I said back there…"

He doesn't say anything, just narrows his eyes at her in a way that makes it clear he remembers every word.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean any of it. I just needed some way to get you moving, and it was all I could come up with."

After a minute, Sonny grudgingly nods. "Well, since it worked, I reckon I can let it slide this once." Just as she starts to relax, he adds in a flatter tone, "Just don't you ever say nothin' like that to me again."

She looks at him. He looks back at her. In a solemn voice, she tells him, "Sonny, the next time we're stuck in a survival situation together and you're bleeding out, I promise to let you die rather than insulting you."

He gives her a hard, unreadable expression, and for a few seconds she thinks she's miscalculated. Then he cracks and grins at her and says, "Nah. You wouldn't. You love me too much."

That gets a laugh from her, startled and genuine. She rolls her eyes, pats his arm, tells him to take it easy, and heads for the door just as Jason and Eric arrive.

"Mandy," Sonny calls to her. When she turns to look back, he meets her gaze and says with absolute sincerity, "You saved my life too. Thank you."

She nods, her throat aching, and goes.


	10. Opening of Eyes

If it were up to Sonny, Jason is pretty sure the Texan would be a permanent fixture in Clay's room. The aftermath of nearly bleeding out has left Quinn perpetually exhausted, though, and he has to spend a lot of time sleeping, whether he wants to or not.

The others take up the slack, making sure Spenser is never left alone for long. Ray isn't allowed out of bed yet, but everyone else - including Brock, who still has to use a wheelchair for the time being - switches off staying at Clay's bedside.

The morning after Spenser was successfully weaned off the ventilator, Jason relieves Blackburn just before dawn. They've been staying with Clay around the clock to try to make sure someone familiar will be with him when he wakes up. Jason is awake anyway, so he figures Blackburn should be freed up to go get some sleep after staying up half the night.

Spenser is breathing on his own and is no longer under sedation, which is good. He has shown zero signs of waking up, which isn't.

The doctors say it's not surprising, that they need to give Clay some time, but patience has never really been Jason's strong suit.

Settling in the chair beside the bed, he gently nudges Spenser's arm. "Wake up," he tells him. "I need to yell at you."

He doesn't mean it, not really. He probably _should_ yell at Spenser about not giving them a heads-up that _Hey, my lung is collapsing and I may have a light case of respiratory failure, _but Jason just doesn't have the energy to be angry about it. Maybe he'll delegate to Ray, who has a gift for reasonably explaining things, without raising his voice at all, in a way that makes you come out of the discussion desperately wanting to never disappoint him ever again.

It's disorienting to realize that the whole stair incident happened less than two weeks ago. It feels like it's been half a lifetime since Jason's biggest worry about his team was Sonny's cracked rib and how to get Clay to stop sulking like a damn child.

Shortly after Jason watches the sun rise through the east window, Clay's doctor arrives to check up on him. After evaluating vitals and machine readouts, she peels back Spenser's eyelids to shine a light in his eyes. He flinches slightly and emits a barely audible groan, which is the most response he's shown to anything in days.

Bracing his arm against his broken ribs, Jason sits forward hopefully, but Spenser lapses back into stillness and silence as soon as the light is gone.

"Well?" Jason asks, once the doctor seems to be done and has stepped back to scribble some notes in Clay's chart.

She responds, so predictably that Jason can practically mouth the words along with her, "Well, there's a lot that we won't know for sure until he wakes up." Then she adds, "I'm optimistic, though. His brain activity looks good. Your medic did one hell of a job, considering the situation."

"Yeah," Jason says quietly. "Yeah, he does that."

The doctor looks up from the chart. "I wouldn't mind meeting him, actually."

Jason huffs a rueful laugh. "Well, you can. He's right down the hall. Took a bullet saving my life."

She smiles back. "Sounds like it's a good thing you have him on your team."

"You've got no idea. We'd probably all be dead by now if it weren't for him."

Maybe half an hour after the doctor leaves, Spenser shows some more signs of life. His fingers wiggle, like they're searching for something to hold onto. He makes that faint noise again. Eventually, his eyes crack open a little, but with no real focus. He smacks his lips, tries to swallow, and makes the universal expression for 'something has died in my mouth.'

Jason hits the call button, hoping to get some ice chips. Moving carefully so as to not anger the ever-present fire in his side, he leans over the bed. "Clay? You in there, buddy?"

Spenser's brow furrows. He closes his eyes, then opens them again, but doesn't seem capable of focusing on Jason's face or voice. By the time the nurse gets there, he's already back out.

The nurse, sensing Jason's agitation, urges patience, but Jason doesn't like it. He wants an answer. He needs to _know_ that Clay Spenser still knows his name, his team, how to tie his shoes. That he can still talk and count and operate.

Fully aware that he's gonna be antsy as hell until he gets some kind of resolution, Jason digs up something to fiddle with to keep himself from peeling off his own cuticles out of sheer anxiety.

Later, with mid-morning sunlight pouring in through the windows, Spenser stirs again. This time he makes an effort to track Jason's voice, and his eyes, though glazed, eventually find his way to his team leader's face.

"Boss?" The kid croaks, almost inaudible behind the oxygen mask. The hospital staff did warn that being on the ventilator might have messed up his throat.

Jason, light-headed with relief, gives him some melting ice chips and warns him not to try to talk too much. While Clay swallows and makes pained faces, Jason gives him the basic rundown: _You're in the hospital; everybody's okay; you're going to be just fine too._

Finished with the ice chips, Spenser moves the mask aside again to whisper, "Bryson?"

Shit. Of _course_ that's the first thing on his mind when he wakes up.

Jason is caught between relief, because Clay pretty clearly remembers the last thing that was happening and that seems like a good sign as far as potential brain damage is concerned, and uncertainty, because he wasn't expecting to have this conversation so soon and isn't quite sure how to handle it.

He takes a deep breath and says levelly, "Bryson didn't make it. That is not your fault."

Spenser swallows, winces, and squeezes his eyes shut. Jason pretends not to notice the tear that trickles down the kid's cheek. He knows from experience that being this badly injured can wreak havoc on your emotional state.

At some point, the team is going to have to answer for how their protectee, a man with friends in high places, ended up dead while all of Bravo survived. Jason has every intention of placing the responsibility on himself, emphasizing his choice to send Spenser and Bryson into the building alone, his hesitation in following them.

He can handle the heat. Spenser maybe could too, but he doesn't need to. Not right now. Not with the harm he took from this mission and everything that came before it.

Thinking about what came before, it occurs to Jason for the first time that Sonny's cracked rib was almost certainly the only thing that prevented Mandy Ellis from dying a slow, horrible death at the hands of the cartel.

It's funny how things sometimes work themselves out - even things that start with people who should know better behaving like drunken idiots.

Clay's doctor turns back up, checks responses and reflexes, confirms that the kid can talk and his memory is intact, and proclaims him well on his way to recovery.

Once the doctor has left, the first person Jason sends for is Sonny. Quinn needs this. Hell, he and Clay probably both do.

When Sonny sees Spenser, his entire face lights up. Clay starts to smile in return before apparently remembering he's supposed to feel guilty and reverting to the hangdog look - which Sonny completely ignores, going in for a careful but enthusiastic hug.

Spenser tries to whisper some kind of apology. Sonny barrels right over it without letting him finish, asking, "What the hell are you sorry for? Scaring us by damn near dying? 'Cause you're forgiven, long as you don't do it again."

Jason sits back and listens as Sonny chatters on about the hospital and the nurses, about his little 'adventure' in Santa Clotilda with Mandy. He watches as the haunted look gradually fades from the kid's face. By the time Clay falls back asleep, he's wearing a faint smile.

Yeah. He'll be okay.

Once Spenser and Ray are stable enough to be moved, the team gets sent back stateside to recover. It takes time, for all of them. Ray deals with residual numbness and nerve pain. Mandy suffers headaches and nightmares. Trent's arm has some muscle damage; so does Brock's leg. Clay has to go through therapy to get his lungs working right again, and for a while he acts paranoid every time he drops something or forgets a word, like he's afraid he actually does have brain damage and everybody is still trying to figure out how to tell him so.

Jason faces down the cake-eaters and answers for Bryson's death. He takes as much heat as expected, and it sucks, but he comes through with his career intact. It helps that Blackburn and Harrington both have his back all the way.

The team straggles back, in ones and twos. For a while, the first few to return just spin up with Alpha or other teams, until enough of them are back to operate as Bravo again.

After their first mission briefing with the entire team, Jason waits until Mandy is deep in conversation with Ray, and then he slides something into the pocket of one of her folders.

It's a tiny soapstone figurine of a woman with upswept hair and downturned eyes, her delicate lashes resting on her cheeks. Jason picked it up on one of his missions with Alpha, has been waiting for the right time to give it to her.

He knows it's not the first gift she's been given. Clay has been leaving slim volumes of poetry on her desk. Trent gave her two new sets of tiny gold earrings, plus a handwritten plan for coping with the nightmares. Ray leaves handmade tissue paper roses, one at a time. Brock, with his gift for metalwork, gave her a filigree hair clip. Sonny leaves scarves to replace the one he bled all over.

By going back even though she'd been told not to, Mandy saved the life of one of their own. Men like them, they don't forget that. Ever.

Later, after the mission, Jason drops by Mandy's desk and finds the figurine sitting next to her vase of tissue paper roses and a book of poetry she has marked her place in with a playing card.

When Mandy looks up, she's rubbing her neck, the way she does when she's got a headache. "You okay?" He asks her.

"Of course. You?"

"Always," he says.

They smile at each other, and life goes on.

* * *

That's all, folks! Thanks for reading.

Before I go, a couple notes:

1) I had several people, in comments/reviews for this story, mention things they'd like to see me write about in the future. I love it when y'all do that! I can't guarantee that prompts/requests will always get filled, but please feel free to share them with me. More ideas are always good. :) In fact, my likely next story, _Ask to Be Unbroken,_ is based on a prompt given to me by bcblueeyes.

2) I did the math and found that, since late March, I've written somewhere around 77,000 words of SEAL Team fic. That's a _lot._ I'm getting a little bit burnt out on writing the longer stories, and I wouldn't be surprised if y'all are also getting a bit burnt out on reading them. While I don't plan to stop writing, I will probably do some shorter one- and two-shot type stuff for a while.


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